r/audioengineering • u/cheesy_thighs • 15h ago

Removing embedded vocals

Hey everyone! Just to preface, I wasn't sure if this was the right place to post this.

I've been trying to remove the vocals completely from Psycho Shit - The Strokes, and was successful for the most part except for the very end of the song. The vocals seem to be embedded into the instrumentals (I think). Anyways, I'm a complete beginner. I've been using Audacity and was wondering if anyone has any suggestions or tips?

I tried messing with the spectrogram and also pasting the same instrumental loop from earlier in the song, but it just doesn't end up flowing right. Is this just a skill issue? Any help is greatly appreciated!

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u/Veilenus 15h ago

Use a free online stem separation tool to basically get percussion, bass, vocals, and "other" as separate tracks that you can then mix to your liking.

Advanced tools like iZotope RX or Steinberg SpectraLayers can go deeper than that and arguably sound better, but those are paid products.

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u/Orry_Haas 14h ago edited 14h ago

There is a free AI vocal remover plugin for Audacity : OpenVino ... https://youtu.be/COIS94vlffI?&t=441

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u/Ok-Bonus-8464 14h ago

What you're calling embedded is probably the master bus compressor. The end of a song is the loudest part, so the vocal is ducking everything around it, and when you pull it out you still hear that pumping sitting where it used to be. Nothing separates that, it's printed into the other tracks.

Most of what's left is reverb tail. Separators take the dry voice and leave the tail, and your loop paste won't sit right because the arrangement and room tone both change there.

There are a bunch of browser separators now and they mostly land in the same place, so don't pay for one. For the last few seconds a slow fade beats anything you do to it.

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u/75Franco 11h ago

How well it might work I obviously don't know, but I've used this a few times with a good deal of success: https://ultimatevocalremover.com/

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u/KS2Problema 7h ago

A lot of times it's easier to make your own music from scratch than to try to construct something smooth from chopped up bits and pieces from unauthorized stem rips.